Yesterday saw 1,000 ex-generals meet in a Taipei's Ta-an Park to rail against President Chen Shui-bian (
Some people might think that this is a triumph of free speech -- and it certainly is worth pointing out that such a meeting would not have been allowed when Hau sat atop the greasy pole. But the meeting forces us to address again a question that seems to be at the heart of the conundrum that is Taiwanese liberal democracy: Where is the line between tolerance and irresponsibility?
These were 1,000 ex-generals, remember, not bank managers or schoolteachers, nothing so innocuous. A thousand men who until quite recently were supposed to lead the armed forces in providing security for the nation. Yet it is quite obvious from their wish for "territorial integration" that protecting Taiwan is the last thing on their minds.
It is hard to imagine anything like this happening anywhere else, no matter how tolerant the society or entrenched its democratic values. Imagine 1,000 retired US generals (to make the analogy fit, you would also have to imagine they were all foreign-born Muslims) meeting on the Mall in Washington to demand that George W. Bush cease punitive measures against al-Qaeda.
American society would be aghast. Why aren't we?
Some might say that people like has-been Hau simply don't matter anymore. But the problem is that the sentiments expressed by Hau and endorsed by his audience are almost certainly shared by a significant number of still-serving officers.
The military was, after all, simply an arm of the Chinese Nationalist Party, rather than the government, until that party lost power in 2000 -- and some readers will remember the reluctance of many senior officers to serve under a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. The military is perhaps the last secure bastion of the Chiang era's reunificationist sentiments, alien as they are to the majority of Taiwanese.
The very fact that so many retired senior officers can both threaten the president and show sympathy with the goals of Taiwan's enemy suggests that something is still very wrong with the military, despite the last four years of professionalization.
What people say in parks is an issue of free speech -- let Hau and his friends say what they like. But the reflection this cast upon the sentiments of the armed forces is a national security issue and of deep concern to us all. The DPP government has been discussing the issue of new national security legislation for a few years, mainly in response to pan-blue-affiliated civil servants defecting to China. What it wants to do is introduce a system of vetting to assess the trustworthiness of those who are involved with national security. The pan-blues have predictably called this "green terror" -- God forbid that they should ever find out what "green terror" actually would be if it ever happened -- but the system the government wants to put into place is no different from the security clearance systems used in the US and the UK.
This is something that the pan-green majority in the legislature resulting from December's elections will, we hope, speedily address. It might be liberal to tolerate Hau and his ilk, but it is folly to allow disloyalty in the armed forces, and the current don't-ask-don't-tell attitude about sentiment toward reunification and China is simply not good enough. A purge is necessary of both the military and the civil service if Taiwan's sovereignty is to be protected, and we need the legal means to effect this as quickly as possible.
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